Francine Mathews - The Cutout

The body of a woman, sprawled on the floor. Her face was a mask of blood.

Lindros was already beside him, pallid-faced but silent. Esterhazy clutched the doorknob, raised his gun in his other hand, and slid quietly into the room.

Lindros followed.

The apartment was cold and raw, a gusting draft pouring in through the ceiling.

He looked up and saw the skylight open. There was a chair overturned like a second body near the woman's corpse. She had been trying to escape through the roof when her killer caught up with her. Esterhazy's gaze slid away from the ruin of her face.

He made his way along the living-room wall to the bedroom doorway, then swung inside with gun raised.

No one was waiting for him.

His heartbeat thudded in his ears. He searched quickly under the bed. Behind the closet door. Through the bathroom.

No one.

Lindros was crouched at the woman's side, checking for a pulse. Esterhazy could have told him not to bother. He pulled a photograph from his breast pocket — the candid shot of Mirjana Tarcic that Tom Shephard had given him four hours earlier.

“Mirjana Tarcic?”

Lindros shrugged.

“Who knows?”

Her face had been crushed to a pulp with something heavy — a crowbar, a vicious boot. Fragments of the woman's skull and teeth were scattered about the wide-plank floors. The bright red rugs were clotted with blood. And the rain had dripped steadily through the open skylight, washing the gore across the room toward the galley kitchen — she must have been killed hours before. In the morning, when they still hadn't known enough to look for her.

Lindros pointed to the corpse's neck.

“Look at that, boss.”

A silk scarf was tightened like a tourniquet around her windpipe, crimson with blood. Esterhazy looked at Shephard's photograph once more. Mirjana Tarcic wore a white silk scarf.

“Boss!” yelled Berg from the foot of the steps.

“There's an old lady down here, says she lives up above! You want to see her?”

The mother. Bassza me.

Esterhazy's stomach heaved. He ducked back into the bathroom without a word.

Tom Shephard could not have reached Marinelli before the red eye blinked, before the laser beam he could not see was intersected and the explosive circuit completed. But he ran anyway, his mouth open in a yell against the stupidity of all cowboys, the bravado of SEALs, toward the Medici prince outlined for an instant against the mouth of hell.

Embassy Budapest officially closed for business at five p.m., but no U.S. installation in a rioting city, with a hostage Vice President and a rescue mission in progress, simply shuts its doors and sends its people home. Caroline had company in the station vault: Vie Marinelli's secretary, an efficient woman in her forties named Teddy, who scrupulously organized files while waiting for news. Teddy was slim and stylish in her long, narrow skirt; she shifted paper with quick hands that never mistook their purpose. Caroline would have been grateful for a distraction — she was tense and apprehensive — but Teddy seemed disinclined to talk.

In her mind, Eric walked slowly away down a rain-washed street.

Christ, Eric, I won't let you just lie down and die.

No. You never would.

She pushed him aside with difficulty, pulled up a chair to a computer terminal, and began composing a cable for Dare Atwood.

Classification : Top Secret.

Routing : the DCI's personal channel. Caroline added her Cutout slug, which would limit access to Dare Atwood alone. Then, confronted with the body of the cable, she typed: The following is information received from Michael O'Shaughnessy, an operative working under nonofficial cover who penetrated the 30 April Organization. During the past thirty months, C/CTC handled O'Shaughnessy in place. This intelligence was secured at C/CTC's direction from 30 April's main computer database.

C/CTC meant “Chief, Counterterrorism Center.” Dare would know immediately what Scottie Sorensen had done, from the moment of MedAir 901's explosion; Dare was a High Priestess of Reason, too. She would unravel the knots taster than Scottie could tie them.

Caroline retrieved Eric's disk from her coat pocket. Downloading foreign data onto a secure Agency computer was technically forbidden; the fear of electronic virus transmission was too great. Caroline suppressed a qualm and pulled up the disk's file list. She began systematically copying it into the DCI's cable.

A phone pierced the station's stillness. Teddy cut it off on the first ring.

“Caroline? Could you go down to Reception and talk to a guy from the federal police? He asked for Shephard or Marinelli, but I said they were unavailable.”

Mirjana. She stood up, her pulse accelerating, and hit the computer's screen saver.

“Please don't secure the vault, Teddy. I'm still cabling Headquarters.”

The visitor, a broad-shouldered, stocky man in a rumpled wool suit, was pacing by the time she got to the marine guard.

“Caroline Carmichael,” she said. “How may I help you?”

He shook her hand mechanically, but his face remained guarded.

“Where is Shephard?” he asked in halting English.

“We expect him momentarily. I work with Mr. Shephard. I'm happy to relay any message — ”

“You are FBI?”

“Department of State,” Caroline said smoothly. “Temporary duty from Washington. And you are — ?”

“Esterhazy.” He flipped open a badge; she studied it briefly.

“Shephard brought you a photograph this morning.”

His eyes widened slightly. He nodded.

A few chairs were ranged against one wall of the reception area; Caroline turned, and Esterhazy followed her. They sat down fifteen feet from the impassive marine guard.

“Tell Shephard the woman is dead,” Esterhazy said softly.

“Mirjana Tarcic? Murdered?”

“But yes.”

“Was she shot? Like Horvath?”

“She was beaten. A scarf around her neck, tight. You do not want to know….”

“You found her in Budapest?”

The man had no reason to tell her anything. His gaze slid uneasily around the foyer; then he seemed to concede.

“In Szentendre. A small town on the Danube Bend.”

“I know it.” Two Sunday-afternoon trips in search of antiques, spring wind in her hair and red wine in her veins. Back when she and Eric had a home to fill.

“Her mother has a flat there,” Esterhazy said. “We learned of it this afternoon. Someone else got there first.”

Krucevic. Or one of his men — Otto, perhaps. He'd have enjoyed choking the woman to death.

Caroline swore under her breath. Eric's network had been rolled up inside of a day. And Eric —

“We found some things stuffed under a mattress. One was a book.. ..” Esterhazy gestured, groping for words. “In Horvath's writing. From his lab — ”

“Notes?”

He nodded.

“I want Shephard to see. Is evidence, you understand, he cannot have this book — but I wish his opinion — ”

“Of course. Did you find anything else?”

The man scrutinized her nervously.

“Glass .. .” The word escaped him. He held up his fingers four inches apart. “So big. Filled with .. . we do not know what. Six of them. These we send to our police lab for study.”

Somebody's prescription got into the wrong hands , Scottie's voice whispered in her mind. The Big Man was quite upset. Drugs from VaccuGen's Berlin headquarters had been stolen two days before.

Not the anthrax vaccine , Scottie had said . So what else would be worth the murder of two people ?

Erzsebet knew something was wrong with Mian's vaccines. What would Krucevic kill to conceal? Mumps . His small contribution to the Muslim problem.